


a great one (everything is nothing, without you)

by sapphictomaz



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Post Series, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, season 8 spoilers!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 19:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz/pseuds/sapphictomaz
Summary: Somewhere between the Milky Way and Altea, Lance grew up.Post season 8. Title from "Great One," by Jessie Reyez.





	a great one (everything is nothing, without you)

**prelude;**

_ “Galaxy Garrison flight log 5-11-14...begin descent.” _

The first time Lance spent hours looking up at the sky, he declared himself a pirate and laid siege to the stars. He was an image of innocence, painted delicately against the backdrop of high midnight, his child’s hand reaching out towards the furthest point he could see. 

“I’m gonna go  _ there _ ,” he declared. The dancing lights in the sky reflected on his eyes; or, perhaps, the gleam in Lance’s gaze lit up the stars. 

His mother held him by the waist, her laugh escaping into the gentle breeze. “One day,  _ mi amor _ ,” she whispered. 

Barely a metre tall, Lance decided he was a conqueror. Maybe in a year or two, when he was bigger and stronger, he’d spread his wings and soar up to the heavens, and the stars would be no match for him. He’d collect them in his hands and put them in his pockets and maybe, depending on the weather, he’d join them for a night or two. He wouldn’t just find a place in the eternal abyss, he’d stake a claim, and then everything would be alright - 

(but even then, he knew that wouldn’t last forever; he’d have to fall back down to earth and the stars might turn to dust, but he’d give what he could keep to his parents and his siblings and then maybe his mother wouldn’t yell so much and his father wouldn’t cry so much and his siblings would love him)

and Lance would be more than just a boy from Cuba with dreams destined to die in the wind. 

Maybe his plan got delayed a year or ten, but so what? He’s here now, and they’re beginning descent.

 

**i.**

It’s a usual day at the Garrison, if such a thing exists, and Hunk is busy gossiping in between bites of some kind of sandwich. Lance is a bit too preoccupied in his own melancholy to care about today’s lunch, but he’s trying his best to focus on Hunk for more than a few reasons:

One, Hunk purposefully found Pidge and then sat down to eat with Lance to cheer him up; two, if Lance thinks about the fact he failed his fighter pilot’s exam again he might just lose it; three, Hunk is his platonic soulmate and it would be horrible of Lance to ignore him; and finally, Hunk  _ always _ has the best gossip.

“I heard Keith’s dropping out,” Hunk says. At this, Pidge’s eyes widen and he practically jumps out of his seat. 

“ _ Really? _ ” he exclaims, doing the classic Pidge thing where his voice raises two octaves when he’s surprised or excited.

Hunk nods, demeanour serious. “Yeah. I know. I mean, he’s gotten, like, in lots of trouble before, but I never thought he’d  _ leave _ .”

“I always thought he’d become top of the class,” Pidge says in agreement. 

“What do you think of Keith, Lance?” 

Keith - the boy who’d placed one spot ahead of Lance, securing the last place in the fighter pilot class, and dooming Lance to the life of a cargo pilot. Or, Keith - the boy with the mullet who was, you know, was nice to look at sometimes and made Lance blush and who he  _ hated _ with all he had because he was just that much better than Lance but that was okay, that was fine, Lance hated himself for never ever  _ minding _ \- 

“He’s got a cool mullet,” Lance replies. It’s not too much of a lie.

 

**ii.**

Turns out, Hunk was only partially right - Keith didn’t drop out of the pilot’s program. He was expelled from it.

“It’s your lucky day, kid,” Iverson commends Lance with a slap on the back. “You’ve got your chance. Don’t mess this up.”

And he’s happy, because now he can fly into the abyss with a vessel matching his inner fire and fury, but the melancholy doesn’t go away. 

“Look alive, kid! This is the best day of your life!”

He’s just a kid with a crush - can  _ somebody _ give him a break?

 

**iii.**

Mid-descent, Lance decides he hates Keith instead. It’s easier than missing someone he never even  _ spoke _ to.

“Wow, I didn’t realize you had such a competitive rivalry,” Hunk says after Lance threw a particularly vile insult Keith’s way. “Besides...he’s out of the program.” 

Hunk’s smart enough to know that there’s more here than meets the eye; but his emotional intelligence is his true strength, so he knows enough not to ask.

_ He doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.  _

Lance is chasing the stars, and they don’t care who he’s loved and who he’s lost and who never even had a chance. No - 

the thing about the stars is that they just keep burning.

 

**iv.**

So they rescue Shiro. So Keith doesn’t really know who he is. So they find the remnants of another race and take to the skies in multi-coloured lions in order to liberate the universe from an antagonistic alien race so  _ what. _

He’ll be there to comfort Hunk when he expresses how scared and out-of-place he feels, and he’ll honestly assure Pidge that he doesn’t care she was lying about her identity and he’ll help Allura through her crisis of time, even if he doesn’t know her. He’ll be there.

When Lance was younger, he thought in order to be safe, he had to take the skies and claim a piece of the world for himself. He’s still young -  _ too _ young, they all are - but he’s starting to think that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

And Keith - 

that’s a whole other issue.

 

**v.**

_ He remembers hearing the drone first. He remembers his muscles moving to action before he could think about it twice. He remembers hearing the explosion before he felt it.  _

_ He doesn’t remember anything at all, except feeling the extinguishing of his inner flame that had been burning since he declared himself conqueror of the cosmos. _

_ Lance is no star. He does not keep burning. _

(Later, he’ll remember recovering enough to shoot Sendak, but not enough to know if his shot was successful. He’ll remember seeing Keith, truly, for the first time, and finally comprehending that a first, young love was not meant to be a person’s last. 

He’ll remember enough to remember saying goodbye, to remember the embrace of death, and to remember enough not to admit remembering any of it at all).

 

**vi.**

Years pass, or - they don’t. They don’t, but they feel like it. 

Sometimes it really, really feels like it.

 

**intermission;**

_ When he was twelve, his school guidance counselor sat him down and asked him to explain the reasoning behind the universe. _

_ Alright, it wasn’t exactly like that - but the question “what are your motivations, Lance?” felt like a punch in the gut.  _

_ “I want...I want to be a star,” Lance blurted out to the adult in front of him, who charged ten cents for every ounce of concern. _

_ “You mean the film industry? Well, you’ve got the personality for it, I’ll give you that.” He pushed his glasses up, leaned in, and prepared to give one of those talks adults liked to give where they paraded around their knowledge about failures that hadn’t even happened yet, as if it was impressive that they were pessimistic and cynical. “I’ll be honest with you, Lance. It’s a tough industry to get into.” _

_ “Right,” Lance agreed, nervously, the flame inside him flickering. That wasn’t what he meant, of course, but maybe adults just didn’t understand dreams anymore. _

 

**vii.**

Things change after he dies for real. 

Sure, it was only for a minute, maybe, and sure, he doesn’t remember anything other than the  _ cold _ and the way his first breath  _ hurt _ . He does remember never quite feeling warm again, not after that - and he remembers the smile on Allura’s face when he came back to life. He remembers that things can be beautiful.

After that, after a while, the days blurred together, mostly because Lance stopped sleeping. It wasn’t easy anymore, not when he closed his eyes and felt the crushing hopelessness of the universe press down against him.

For a while, he’d use his insomnia to his own benefit, and he’d spend hours training in all kinds of scenarios. Shiro complimented him on the amount of time he spent training; Allura commented on how fast he’d improved. It was good. He was doing good. 

It didn’t take long for even that to lose its joy.

And now he doesn’t sleep until he’s so tired his eyes don’t stay open. He doesn’t eat until his stomach threatens to collapse. He doesn’t talk to anyone unless he has to, he yells and he grows numb and he’s withdrawn, caving into himself, and it’s not fair.

Lance no longer looks outside the window of the Castle. It feels as if the stars are mocking him.

_ This is what you wanted, isn’t it? _ they chant.  _ You came here to claim us, so DO IT -  _

“I’m trying! I’m trying!  _ I’m trying!” _

A soft knock at the door can only belong to Allura, the only one of them still poised, still graceful. “Lance? Are you alright?”

He barks back an affirmative before turning on the shower, lying on the floor and sobbing for hours and hours and hours - 

 

**viii.**

And then, he picks himself back up and puts a smile on his face and learns to compartmentalize like everyone else.

_ This is a war. There is no time to be selfish. _

(Nevermind that there is always a war, somewhere - so when is it the time?)

 

**ix.**

Facing down a Galra warship on his home planet, all alone - it seems like a fitting way to go.

_ He’s young and vulnerable, throwing himself in the line of fire because that’s what thought was right -  _

_ He’s older and wartorn, experienced and hardened, wise enough to know when there’s no escaping one’s predicament -  _

Over the years, some things had changed. Lance’s understanding of death has never been one of them.

 

**x.**

He asks Allura to his family’s dinner because it’s the right thing to do, at first.

Lance really does care for her, deeply, in a way he hasn’t cared about anyone since - well, since Keith, he supposes. Still, it feels like the wrong time. It always felt like the wrong time, but if he doesn’t ask she’ll be alone during their last night on earth and that’s not something he’d wish on anyone.

So he asks her. She says yes. It’s the beginning of a practical love story and perhaps - perhaps that’s the way it’s meant to be, in the real world, in the world where people accept reality and carry on because they don’t have a choice.

It’s nice. It’s more than nice - it’s a perfect night. 

Lance loves Allura. 

And that’s - that is a fire all on its own.

 

**xi.**

He was young, and thought with his heart, leading to his love of Keith’s energy and passion. Now he is older and he thinks with his mind. He thinks with the part of him that can logically asses reality and the part of him that doesn’t care much for a child’s dreams.

Allura, she - she has enough heart for the both of them.

(His heart hasn’t gone anywhere. He’d be a fool to think that. Every moment he looks at Allura, he can feel it beating within his chest, despite the walls around it).

 

**xii.**

Allura has enough heart for the both of them, but even that wasn’t enough to keep hers beating.

 

**xiii.**

After everything, Lance decides that flying around in the sky and conquering land that isn’t meant to belong to anyone is meant to stay as a child’s fantasy.

No longer a child, he doesn’t have the need for it. It wasn’t what he wanted. Not that he  _ knows _ what he wants - but perhaps, part of growing up is realizing that nobody wants anything other than to live. 

Lance wants to live. This, for him, is a revelation of its own. 

The scenery of Altea, the new marks on his cheeks, feeling the breeze on his face, feeling grass underneath his bare feet, growing his own crops, spending the sunrise in a field of flowers, watching Shiro marry the man of his dreams in that very field - that makes him happy.

He is not happy all the time, but Lance knows that he  _ can _ be happy with his feet firmly on the ground, and that is enough for a lifetime.

 

**epitaph;**

Keith was the one to teach him passion, to teach him to strive for what he wanted, to set his gaze on his goals and pursue them with no end.

_ “Classic Keith!” _

Allura was the one to teach him stability, patience, and calm, but she also taught him that every moment required its own approach, and there is no one answer for all of life’s problems.

_ “To Allura!” _

The Lions leave, no longer needed, and Lance tilts his head upwards, finally able to breathe. 

“It’s the start of something new, huh?” Hunk says, wistfully, staring up at the sky.

The fire in Lance, it burns just as bright as it always did. He was a fool to think it would be that easy to extinguish his own soul.

His hand finds Hunk’s, and for the first time in a while, he smiles with all sincerity. “It’s the start,” he says. “It’s only just begun.”

_ Begin descent... _

**Author's Note:**

> yo whaddup! i am aware this was all over the place but so is all my writing so i suppose it is only fitting 
> 
> the 'begin descent' thing and the 'classic keith; to allura' are references to lance's first & last lines in the series, btw, so that's why they're kind of weird and stick out, i wanted to work them in but they did not make it easy
> 
> anyways please come yell at me on twitter @ sapphicecho. thanks for checking this out love u <3


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